With high premium placed on styling and placement of branded and general merchandise in retail stores and spaces, retail design is a fast-track career – Odeal D’Souza

Arguably for the first time since independence following which a licence-permit-quota regime was imposed upon the public of free India, the country is experiencing a bricks-n-mortar (as also online) retailing revolution. Lifestyle and fashion stores, supermarket chains, giant shopping malls, and highly competitive online promotions are testimony of post-liberalisation India’s retail boom. Little wonder that some of the hottest jobs are in the sunrise retail online and offline industry. 

Within the offline retail industry, a lucrative career option is design. With high premium placed on styling and placement of branded and generic merchandise in retail stores designed to give maximum customer satisfaction, retail design is a fast-track career. A retail designer plans and draws up blueprints for new stores — she designs, builds and improves retail establishments. From interiors, window displays, furnishing, lighting and flooring to furniture and accessories, a retail designer’s job is to conceptualise and create inviting spaces which attract customers and enhance the brand image and appeal of retail stores and supermarkets. Effective visual merchandising attracts, engages, and motivates customers to make purchase decisions. 

Study programmes

Although a higher secondary school certificate is sufficient qualification to enter this vocation, diploma and degree programmes provide a better foundation for success. Several higher education institutions in India offer specialised study programmes in offline retail design. 

The top-ranked National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad offers a design for retail experience postgrad programme. The Maharashtra Academy of Engineering Education and Research’s MIT Institute of Design, Pune has a four-year undergraduate programme and a two-year postgrad course while the National Institute of Design, R&D Campus, Bangalore offers a postgraduate ‘design for retail experience’ study programme to graduates in design or other streams with a year’s full-time connected work experience. Other options include the Masters of fashion technology in design space of NIFT, Delhi and the postgraduate programme in visual communication offered by the National Institute of Creative Communication, Bangalore.

Pay and progression

The retail industry is booming in India and abroad, and the demand for store designers far exceeds supply. Potential employers include interior design firms, retail establishments and architecture firms. After a few years of experience, most retail designers go solo and set up their own practice. Freshers apprenticing with design firms start off on Rs.15,000-25,000 per month, which rises to Rs.45,000 after two-three years of experience. Remuneration increases with experience while the sky is the limit for independent retail space designers.

Professional profile

“Retail design is a highly rewarding profession as the requirements of the job go beyond merely designing retail spaces and units. We have the added responsibilities of visually communicating the story of brands to consumers to enhance brand value and to make shopping a pleasurable experience,” says Jenny Andrews, a much sought-after Bangalore-based retail designer and promoter-managing director of Studio J (estb.2010), which has designed retail spaces for globally-respected brands such as Puma, Enamor, Bosch, Levis and Indigo Nation. 

A visual arts graduate of Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, Bangalore, Andrews began her career in interior design and visual arts with Itty Zachariah, a well-known architect in Bangalore. After a two-year stint with Zachariah, in 1998 she went solo as an independent designer specialising in retail design with the first Indigo Nation retail store in Bengaluru designed by her. In 2010, she promoted Studio J and simultaneously completed a women’s entrepreneurship programme at IIM, Bangalore. 

Andrews advises aspiring retail designers to intern with well-established architecture and retail design firms, as there is often a mismatch between the study programmes and industry expectations and practice. “Though it’s important to have a foundation degree in visual arts and/or retail design, study programmes are not quite in sync with industry needs. Therefore, it’s advisable even for graduates of professional institutes to sign up as apprentices and acquire hands-on experience. As the retail boom spreads to rural India, the demand for designers is set to grow exponentially, providing infinite opportunities for those with the ability to combine visual arts and aesthetics to boost sales through customer satisfaction,” says Andrews.